Randomly Noted

Very good show. Especially now that its ties to the wealth management industry have been exposed by our colleagues at the WSJ’s Speakeasy blog…

Today’s WSJ piece about Apple considering launching an internet TV service underscores just how fast the television landscape is changing. Apple is almost certainly on the right track – in fact, it’s a bit late. Hulu (owned by three media firms including our own News Corp.) is already in that space, as is Netflix. In our home, we have a flat-screen TV but no cable television subscription. Instead, our television is hooked up to our computer as a second monitor, and we watch programs from Hulu and others, or borrow DVDs from the public library. We don’t miss real-time TV at all – mainly because we’re not sports aficionados. That said, the upcoming kick-off of American Idol’s new season will be the true test of our family’s TV-less experiment, which began when we moved back to the U.S. last June. While abroad, we always had cable TV and spent too many hours slumped on a couch flipping from one junky show to another. Viewers’ ability to buy the precise programs they want, whenever they want, is the way of the future. Apple, Hulu and Netflix have it right.

Well-known bank analyst Dick Bove has come out today and said he’ll stop providing instant analysis on television. “I’m not going to do it anymore. I’m going to have to see the numbers before I go on air,” he told DJN’s Brendan Conway. “It creates an untenable situation.” It sure does. Yesterday, Bove downgraded Wells Fargo to “sell” only hours after speaking positively about the bank on CNBC. The U.S. stock market turned down within moments of his downgrade. (Wells shares fell, too.) Bove tells Brendan that after appearing on CNBC during the morning he spent six hours digesting Wells Fargo’s third-quarter earnings report. “Once I sent through the numbers, it was evident to me that this company’s earning power was lower,” he told us today. Bove’s not ruling out TV altogether – just instant financial punditry. In fact, he went on Fox Business Network (owned by DJN’s parent company, News Corp.) this morning – but avoided discussing today’s spate of bank earnings. Instant punditry is a joy, and peril, of blogging and other corners of journalism, of course. So I feel absolutely no Schadenfreude at Bove’s expense.

California is continuing its trend-setter ways. You’ll recall the giant state was out front in trying to tame auto emissions, among other things. Now it’s after big-screen televisions.

Marc Lifsher reports in The Los Angeles Times the California Energy Commission is scheduled to release new proposed energy use standards today for public comment, with a final vote in November. Maxium energy use rules for televisions would start in 2011.

The article reports mixed views from the affected industry. It will be interesting to see if other states follow suit. With the booming consumer desire for ever-larger televisions, this could be an emerging energy issue.

Lifsher reports: “The average plasma screen uses more than three times as much energy as a bulky, old-fashioned cathode-ray tube TV.”

The thing about living in Asia is we’re always ahead of the rest of the world. When it’s morning here, it’s the night before in New York. We ring in the New Year first. Etcetera. But today we’re behind in one respect. One very big respect. We don’t know who won American Idol. That is, those of us who haven’t peeked at internet coverage of Wednesday night’s Season 8 final results show. From Hong Kong to Singapore, my Idol-addled colleagues and I are succeeding – so far – in NOT finding out if it was Adam or Kris. Will we make it through the day? Continue reading…